


End of the Road

by emrisemrisemris



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: M/M, past Lantar Sidonis/Garrus Vakarian, post-ME2, pre-ME3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 23:25:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11793633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emrisemrisemris/pseuds/emrisemrisemris
Summary: He'd been there about three months when Tarquin Victus had walked into his bar.





	End of the Road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Floranna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Floranna/gifts).



> Written as a treat for Spectre Requisitions 2017.

He'd been oddly tickled to find out that the old proverb existed in at least one of the major human languages, as close to word for word as it could be given the gulf in grammar: _History repeats itself._ Around and around it went, like a well-practiced drill or the steps of a dance. There was a kind of tragic elegance to it on the grand scale, something to make philosophers opine about the fundamental inclinations of the soul. On the personal level, looking back over a life lived in variations on the same theme, it just seemed dull: less like a grand dynastic tragedy and more like a sitcom running through the same six jokes season after season. He'd even written it down once, halfway through pouring out his troubles to an off-duty Blue Sun in a bar:

1: Go to a new place, or try his hand at a new thing, in the hope that this time it would be different.  
2: Meet someone, usually a handsome someone with slightly too few scruples and a burning need to prove himself.  
3: Everything fails catastrophically.  
4: See 1.

And that had been _before_ Omega, which had picked up the same old story like a studio exec presented with a no-budget, filmed-on-omnitool student drama and proceeded to remake it as blood-drenched action-horror for the big screen. _I know! Let's make the love interest a vigilante! They can fight a mercenary group! No, three mercenary groups! And then - betrayal! And then it turns out the love interest wasn't really dead at all -_

It had gone off-script at that point, as evidenced by the fact that here he was, alive. 

He'd turned himself into C-Sec, half in the hope they'd finish matters for him. Instead he'd sat in a cell for a month while they exchanged messages with whoever Aria T'Loak employed to talk to cops, and eventually let him go because he hadn't committed any crimes in C-Sec space and nobody in the jurisdiction where he _had_ committed them gave a shit. They hadn't even confiscated his money.

Back on Palaven, he'd drifted, uncertain of where to go but nursing a deep certainty that he needed to be somewhere, and ended up behind the bar in a little desert town in the back of beyond. The dust glowed when the sun went down, and with the silver mountains stretching across the horizon, every morning was like stepping into a painting. 

It was the kind of place where the philosopher-generals in the old stories went to commune with their ancestors; where the widows and widowers of ancient battles had climbed the rocky outcrops to keen for their dead. Somewhere where there were sometimes spiny fossils in the mesas, detritus of a sea that had been dry for half a billion years. Somewhere where the sky was big enough to shrink all sins in comparison.

The town had had mines, once; now it mostly existed as somewhere for the soldiers at the nearby base to go when they weren't on duty. There were always a few of them around, in the red armour or neat black-and-red fatigues of the Ninth, or the green and silver of the Twenty-Second. 

He'd been there about three months when Tarquin Victus had walked into his bar.

*

Three months after _that_ , he lay with his head on Tarquin's shoulder watching the winter sun drag itself up over the mountains and wondered if he'd managed to beat the odds at last. 

Tarquin's armour was stacked neatly by the door, undersuit and boots folded up in the bowl of the backplate. It was about the only neat thing in the apartment. Lantar's own clothes were variously in the hopper of the washing machine, over the back of the nearest chair, on the kitchen table and on the floor next to the shrine in its little alcove, though if Tarquin said anything he was going to point out that it wasn't _him_ who'd dropped them there.

It had been a good night. Warmed by the memory, he twisted far enough to nuzzle his forehead into the side of Tarquin's neck, and was rewarded with an appreciative purr deep in Tarquin's throat, and Tarquin's hand coming up to scratch him affectionately under the crest.

"Sometimes I look at this and wonder why I ever left Palaven," Lantar said. He'd left behind his beloved silver mountains, and gained - what? A few more boyfriends and blood on his hands. 

"You would have wondered," Tarquin pointed out. "Sat here all your life wondering what you were missing. I did. 'S why I joined up."

Lantar had to give him that one. "Probably." He stroked the back of Tarquin's hand. "All I found was new ways to screw up. You know -" 

He reached for the words, and hesitated.

"What?" said Tarquin.

It was the last day of Tarquin's leave; come tomorrow he'd be gone for six months or more, out on duty at the ragged edge of the krogan DMZ.

Now or never.

"I screwed up badly," Lantar said. "That's why I came home."

"How badly are we talking?" Tarquin said softly.

Lantar was suddenly grateful they weren't looking at one another. First the words had caught in his throat, and now they wouldn't stop; it was somehow easier to speak into air, towards the blank wall of the apartment and the little shrine. "Badly. People died." He'd said it now. "I … lost my nerve. Said _yes, sir_ when I should've said _no_." 

Tarquin's arm tightened around his shoulders, wordlessly.

"I expected my - my commanding officer to put a bullet in my skull, after," Lantar said bleakly. "I would've earned it. But he didn't." He half-shrugged into Tarquin's side. "And here I am."

He'd said it, and the world had failed to tilt on its axis; had neglected to end. 

Tarquin nuzzled the top of Lantar's head. "I'll have to thank him if we ever meet. I'm … very glad to have you, Lan."

"Even knowing that?"

"What would you have said if I'd told the same story to you?"

"Er …" Lantar disentangled himself from Tarquin's arm, and turned to look at him, half-expecting sarcasm. But Tarquin's eyes were open and honest, disarmingly so, and Lantar stammered "... I hope you've learned better? Don't do it again?"

"Close enough," said Tarquin, and leaned forward to press their brows together. 

*

Lantar got up with him in the blue pre-dawn next morning, helping him into the bulky red armour and scouring the apartment for left-behind belongings. 

On the step, waiting for Tarquin's aircar, he tried to take in everything, to remember all the things that photos couldn't capture. The way Tarquin's long mandibles quirked when he heard a bad joke. His grip on Lantar's waist.

The aircar pulled up, and Tarquin squeezed his hand again, face wry. "It's going to be a long six months."

"Trust me," said Lantar, "I'm not going anywhere."


End file.
